In 2009 the Obama administration, for reasons and an end I can only make a guess at, rekindled this program and renamed it Operation Fast and Furious. But, they made a few changes. They decided the Mexican government did not need to know about it. The methods used for keeping the guns under surveillance were poorly thought out and were an abject failure. They made little or no effort to arrest the gun runners after the sales from legitimate gun sellers happened. So predictably most of those guns were lost, presumably to the drug lords. Finally instead of just 400 guns from Wide Receiver, 1765 guns were sold under Fast and Furious.
As a result, hundreds of Mexican citizens, ICE agent Jaime Zapata, and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry were killed with weapons that had been sold under Fast and Furious. The Dec 2010 murder of Brian Terry brought the program to attention of the American public. Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder denied in March 2011 that he knew about Fast and Furious, even though e-mails released by his Department of Justice (DOJ) say otherwise. There has been an ongoing Congressional investigation almost since F/F blew up. The DOJ has dragged their feet in providing documents to Congress concerning F/F. Eric Holder is about to be held in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over those documents pertaining to the operation. Obama has invoked Executive Privilege to thwart the investigation.
Here are my questions on this whole mess;